The Nature of Sunlight
I want to give in again
the way I did when
we were newly married.
In My Life, was your wedding song.
I was pregnant, and we were happy
for three months. Then you got sick.
I remember one afternoon
I wheeled you to Ocean View Park
to shave your head.
I bought you a warm grey hat.
Your eyebrows were gone,
your dark eyes, deep
as a starlit night.
And while falling back
in that spacious sky
grace seemed to hold us.
What did I know of God
when I was cleaning the sink
at the dentist's office, after you had died,
and the Ajax ran out, so I shook it hard
and banged it against the counter
and began to curse God and cry
and I could not stop.
What did I know of the nature of sunlight,
of how slowly the bark of a tree closes
over its wound, or of the mountain
and small cracked stone of my heart,
that still yearns to know,
the way a river bank
and the brief leaves know,
how to allow and let go.
Trees Full of Birds
I remember lying down
on the rusty chaise lounge,
in the backyard, trees full of birds,
trying to imagine my own death,
so I could feel closer to you,
so I could have some idea
of what you were going through.
But my mind slowly went blank,
as if trying to remember a dream.
and I kept being interrupted
by the sound of the sprinklers
with its sputter and sweep
across the lawn.
You were in the house,
lying on a bed in the living room
by the window with one,
maybe two weeks left.
I went in to lie beside you,
a soft square of sun
thrown over our legs,
with nothing left to do but this.
The pastor had visited in the morning.
He asked if you were angry or afraid,
I am afraid.
Can we talk about that?
This morning, forty years later,
I tried again to imagine
that I will die one day.
I got as far as that
when my cat crawled over me
and went to the window
to call to the birds.
Laura Denny is a retired educator who lives in the Santa Cruz Mountains in California. She is a docent for Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in One Art, Pictura Journal, Does it Have Pockets, Sunlight Press, Remington Review, Last Leaves Magazine, and other literary magazines.
January House Literary Journal 
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